Come Saturday Morning: It’s My Birthday!

No, it really isn’t my birthday. It just feels that way, because Tony Sutton, the current chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota and its former treasurer, has pretty much begged the media to look into his financial dealings. By trying to get the local media to bite on the Most Pathetic Smear Attempt Ever, he’s made himself fair game. Oh, goody!

We’ve already touched on the collapse of his Baja Sol fleet of restaurants; what was once planned to be a nationwide chain has rapidly shrunk back to a handful of locations in Minnesota, and even those are dropping in number. His career as the RPM’s treasurer was marred in similar fashion, as MN Observer related last year:

He’s the one whose name is most closely associated with the horrific accounting and auditing nightmare that is the treasury of the RPM. He’s been front and center in that complaint filed with the Federal Elections Commission and he’s the one who has had rather pointed questions directed at him by the FEC here, here, here, and here. He also had to send in those humiliating letters – over and over and over again – stating that “An amended report correcting this error will be filed when the committee’s internal audit has been completed.” In short, he was apparently the doofus in charge as this mess was allowed to fester and grow into what some think will eventually lead to the largest FEC fine in history for poor bookkeeping.

And of course, the whole pretext for giving him the RPM chair gig was his much-trumpeted “business experience”.

Like I said, it’s my birthday.

But wait! Three months after shutting down a restaurant in a high-traffic food court in downtown Minneapolis, and less than a year after shutting down the last of their Ohio locations, Baja Sol is allegedly On The Move:

…Baja Sol President Bridget Sutton — who owns the chain along with her husband, Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Tony Sutton, and TCF Financial Corp. Chairman and CEO Bill Cooper — said the company is gearing up for a new wave of expansion, turning to corporate growth instead of franchising until the economy rebounds.

Yeah — they’re on the move, and that move is known as “circling the drain”. I’m not sure that even the Coopers are truly stupid enough to pump any more dough into this turkey farm before they finally give up on it. But it would be loverly if they did.